CSBG Archive

A Month of Comic Book Sites – 20th Century Danny Boy

All throughout June, I’ll spotlight a different web site about comic books.. Like with the month of independent comics, the month of LGBT comics and last month’s month of webcomics, I figure I will let you comic book site/blog owners out there suggest your comic book web site (or blog) for spotlight during this month. So if you want me to spotlight your comic book site, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com!

Today we look at Daniel Best’s excellent comic book history blog, 20th Century Danny Boy.

I have spoken about Daniel Best frequently on this here blog, mostly due to the great comic book historical work that Daniel has done over the years. He has helped me on many a Comic Book Legend Revealed. In fact, I even specifically thank him in the acknowledgements of my book, Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed.

20th Century Danny Boy is Daniel’s blog, and it deals with a great variety of comic book related topics. Really, anything that interests Daniel gets featured there. Most recently, that has been the Kirby vs. Marvel case, where Jack Kirby’s heirs are trying to recapture the copyrights on a number of comic book properties created or co-created by Kirby. Best has an extensive collection of the documents in the case, along with cogent analysis of the particulars of the case. You can click here to see all of his Kirby vs. Marvel posts.

Best is a tireless advocate for classic comic book creators. He has written/co-written books about Ross Andru/Mike Esposito, Jim Mooney and an upcoming book about the Australian comic book company, Newton Comics. He recently did a remarkable spotlight on Don Heck (you can read it here).

Truly, 20th Century Danny Boy is the type of comic book blog where once you start looking through the archives, you can easily find yourself reading for hours. It is an awesome resource for fans of comic book history, and I highly recommend it.

Edo Bosnar

Glad you highlighted this one, it’s a fantastic blog. And I can confirm that last remark about getting caught up reading for hours after poking through the blog’s archives. Just reading those documents pertaining to the Kirby v. Marvel case can take up quite a bit of time, since he usually posts them complete and unabridged.
For any visitors new to his blog, I’d recommend hunting down the series of guest posts done last year by Rich Buckler, which are basically a memoir of how he first broke into comics and his career path afterward (although to date they only go up to the early ’80s). Absolutely fascinating reading.